All Stories by Lisa Grossman
- Planetary Science
Jupiter’s moons could keep each other warm by raising tidal waves
Along with gravity from the enormous planet, tidal forces between Jupiter’s moons could generate a surprising amount of heat.
- Space
‘Exotic’ lightning crackles across Jupiter’s cloud tops
Newly spotted lightning, which could form thanks to ammonia antifreeze, is weaker but more frequent than any flashes seen on Jupiter before.
- Planetary Science
The Perseverance rover caps off a month of Mars launches
With the launch of NASA’s Perseverance rover, the rush to the Red Planet is under way.
- Space
To rehearse Perseverance’s mission, scientists pretended to be a Mars rover
Seven Mars scientists pretended to be the Mars Perseverance rover on a training exercise in the Nevada desert.
- Planetary Science
NASA’s Perseverance rover will seek signs of past life on Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover will collect rocks and search for past life on Mars using lasers and zoomable cameras among other instruments.
- Astronomy
This is the first picture of a sunlike star with multiple exoplanets
A first family portrait reveals a weird cousin of the solar system: a star about the mass of the sun orbited — distantly — by two massive gas giants.
- Astronomy
Pinning down the sun’s birthplace just got more complicated
Many astronomers think that the sun was born in a loose association of thousands of stars. A new study suggests there’s another possibility.
- Astronomy
The closest images of the sun ever taken reveal ‘campfire’ flares
The first images from Solar Orbiter, a NASA-European Space Agency spacecraft, show tiny, never-before-seen flares across the sun’s surface.
- Space
Two new books explore Mars — and what it means to be human
‘Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars’ and ‘The Sirens of Mars’ are surprisingly apt reads during the pandemic.
- Planetary Science
How upcoming missions to Mars will help predict its wild dust storms
Predicting the weather on Mars is essential for landing and keeping rovers — or astronauts — safe on the surface. The next Mars missions will give forecasts a boost.
- Space
A newfound exoplanet may be the exposed core of a gas giant
A planet about 734 light-years away could be a former gas giant that lost its atmosphere or a failed giant that never finished growing.
- Space
Black hole plasma jets are shaped like bell-bottoms
Jets of high-energy particles change from slightly curved sides to flared cones as they shoot away from galaxies, just like flare-legged pants.
